Jul 7, 2008 10:40 am US/Central
'Pregnancy Pact' Moms Mocked In July 4th Parade
BEVERLY, Mass. (CBS) ―
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An image from the YouTube video of the Beverly Farms parade.
YouTube/CBS
A group of pregnant girls at Gloucester High School were mocked in a series of controversial parade floats in Beverly, Mass. over the holiday weekend.
The group of 17 girls in Gloucester made international headlines last month after Time magazine posted a story that claimed some of them had made "a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together."
That story spurred several young people in upscale Beverly Farms to create some R-rated floats for the town's annual "Horribles 4th of July Parade," an event that is typically politically incorrect, reported CBS station WBZ-TV in Boston.
Mixed in the parade with marching bands and children were a float that featured men in diapers crawling out from in between a woman's legs propped in birthing stirrups and a flatbed trailer full of young women pretending to be pregnant bumping and grinding at a baby shower.
Some in the parade also threw condoms into the crowd.
There were several other sights that many felt were crude, offensive and indecent. A video of the parade was posted on YouTube over the weekend.
According to the Boston Herald, three of the judges walked off and quit.
"I've been involved with this for 40 something years, but I won't be a judge again," Gail Townsend told the paper.
"I get it, it's a Horribles Parade, but it was overkill with the Gloucester pregnancies," she said. "The thing that upset us more than anything was they were throwing condoms. There were 5- and 6-year-old kids picking them up and saying, 'What kind of candy is this?'"
Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk said she was "deeply offended" by the parade that insulted her working class fishing village.
Beverly Mayor William Scanlon Jr. said the parade is not sponsored by the city. He told the Herald, "It's a horrible story."
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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